MONUMBENT TO DECAY

MONUMBENT TO DECAY;Toll Is Even Greater In Forgotten Anacostia

By DON TERRY with KAREN DE WITT

Published: July 26, 1996

WASHINGTON—
Markeisha Richardson is a tall, athletic 13-year-old who lives in Valley Green, a public-housing development built in 1961. By the 1980's, it had come to be known as Death Valley, for all the killings in and around its 312 apartments.

Now the development is called Ghost Town, because most of the gunmen are either dead or locked up and because only eight families remain. They huddle together in a pair of two-story buildings, surrounded by dozens of boarded-up buildings as silent as tombstones in a graveyard.

The boys at school say I live in the haunted house projects," Markeisha said. "But I don't care. At least I got a roof over my head. A lot of people don't even have that."

Markeisha lives in the other Washington, the neglected city east of the Anacostia River. The Anacostia has long been the Berlin wall of the capital. Its polluted waters divide the Washington of power and postcards from a city of poverty and broken promises.

West of the Anacostia are the polished monuments to America's might: the White House, the Capitol, the Gap.

On the other side are tarnished testimonials to America's failures: street corners crowded with jobless men; inadequately staffed health clinics; abandoned public housing, and thriving open-air drug markets.

Nowhere is the decline more visible than here, where the police are always busy, the body count from homicides is high and the city's highest rates of infant mortality and poverty eat away at people's spirits. While many problems in the District of Columbia can be found in any big city, they seem more embarrassing here because they are in the nation's capital.

"This is the same city where the President of the United States lives," said Mike Johnson, a community advocate from Ward 8, the city's poorest section, "and we're living in a war zone. How is he going to go overseas and tell other people how to live in peace, and he allows this to go on a few miles from the White House?"

The black middle class has long had a foothold east of the river, where Frederick Douglass, the fiery abolitionist known as the Sage of Anacostia, once lived. But in recent years much of the black middle class here and across the city has fled the District because of its stubborn poverty and deteriorating schools.

To counter this decline, successive Federal administrations have vowed to find new solutions to fight the urban plight.

Jack F. Kemp formed his grand vision for public housing while serving as Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under President George Bush. Speaker Newt Gingrich has talked about using Washington as a laboratory for Republican solutions to welfare, unemployment and crime. Most recently, the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, sat in the White House penning her best seller on community responsibility for raising children. But so far, all the vaunted plans have produced is talk.

And as the financial crisis continues here, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling for more cuts in the city's budget. The citizens east of the river, families like Markeisha's, will surely feel the cuts the most.

Her school, in Ward 8, does not have enough books, much less computers. The police in the ward have to fight the highest crime rates in the city with the worst shortages of equipment, and the fear of violence is never far away.

"We had two people shot in my building once," she said. "And the other day, some boys jumped out of a car and started shooting. They looked younger than me. I just don't know why life is so crazy sometimes."

Hope might be battered in Markeisha's Washington, but it is not dead.

A few years ago, Valley Green tenants and the members of a church from Northwest Washington, the wealthy part of the city, turned one of the vacant apartments into a place of prayer and study.

They call the apartment the Jesus House.

In the living room, Bible study for children is held on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. In a back bedroom, six computers have been set up, and tutors from the church, Christ Our Shepard, come every Thursday.

Not long ago, Bible study was canceled because someone was shot to death on nearby Second Street, where some of the children live, and the gunman threatened to shoot anyone else he saw.

Katie French, Markeisha's tutor, is a 23-year-old technical writer who lives in Northwest. Recently Ms. French drove from Valley Green to Second Street to pick up children for the classes. As she drove, she passed a pile of debris along a curb.

"The city would never let this happen in Northwest," she said, pointing to the trash. "Never. Ever."

The next week, the trash was still there.

The Politics Independence Is Threadbare

In the early 1970's, home rule held the promise of a better life for all Washingtonians, whether they lived in Ward 3, the city's richest, or Ward 8. But for black Washingtonians, 65 percent of the city's population, home rule had a meaning beyond the nuts and bolts of who would govern: It was a declaration of independence from the white Federal lawmakers who had been in charge.

In 1975, the funk-rock group Parliament captured the moment in their song "Chocolate City," celebrating Washington's new home rule as black America's "piece of the rock" surrounded by "vanilla suburbs."

"Hey, we didn't get our 40 acres and a mule, but we did get you, Chocolate City," the song goes. "You don't need the bullet when you've got the ballot."

Shortly after Marion S. Barry Jr. was sworn in as Mayor in 1978, the city was booming, especially downtown. Across the Anacostia, however, many people complained that the good times were passing them by.

By the mid-1980's, the national recession arrived, along with crack cocaine. And by the time Mr. Barry was arrested for drug possession in 1990, the District was well on its way to a financial crisis, brought on in part by the limits imposed by home rule and in part by the poor management of the city's leaders.

Nonetheless, the promise of home rule was still strong, even in the poor, black sections east of the Anacostia -- Wards 6 and 7 as well as 8. And these wards supported Mr. Barry in his 1994 political comeback after he served six months in prison.

Mr. Barry's claim of redemption resonated in a place where many people know from bitter man-in-the-mirror experience that hard times and personal demons can bend even the strongest back. Returning him to the mayor's office was as much a nose-thumbing at white Washington power brokers as it was a gesture of belief that Mr. Barry would improve their lot.

Mostly ignored by the rest of the city except in television reports of the drive-by shooting, the abandoned baby, the found body, voters east of the Anacostia went to the polls with a vengeance. Their numbers canceled out the anti-Barry vote of affluent, white areas like Ward 3, which had once avidly supported him.

But the city's fiscal trauma has left Mr. Barry powerless to deliver the jobs and perquisites of his three earlier administrations when he larded the bureaucracy with jobs for his supporters.

Instead, shake-ups, dismissals and furloughs have been the order of the day as the city struggles under the eye of a financial control board, appointed by President Clinton last year to manage the District's budget.

"There's a lack of spirit in the people like I've never seen before," said Rahim Jenkins, the leader of a black men's anti-crime and civic group. "It's almost like God doesn't live in D.C. anymore."

Not even Mr. Barry's presence as a resident has brought any succor to Ward 8 -- except, people say, for the residents of his block. The round-the-clock police detail that guards Mr. Barry must make that block one of the safest in the city, they say.

But even Ward 8's love affair with the Mayor may be waning. When asked about the impact of the city's fiscal crisis on their lives, people east of the river said they were used to being powerless in a city of power.

"He's a politician, right?" Jacqueline Massey, a neighborhood advocate and president of the Valley Green tenants group, said of Mr. Barry. "He came through here years ago and promised to help us, and the next thing we know he's in jail. But he's no different than any other politician. They all make promises on Monday and break them on Tuesday."

The Section Expanse of Woe At Capitol's Elbow

The rolling hills east of the Anacostia offer some of the best views of Washington, especially at night when the Capitol is lighted up like an unobtainable magic kingdom. But this area is the Washington left off the tourist maps -- where statistics read like those in a developing country; where bad things can happen at any time, and where people start at an early age to talk more about surviving life than enjoying it. The city's spiraling financial decline has only made things worse.

East of the river are 7,000 welfare cases. To the west, in Ward 3, there are 30.

In Ward 8, 26 percent of the households live at the Federal poverty level, compared with 15 percent in the city over all and 6 percent in Ward 3, according to 1992 local statistics. There is only one public library branch and a smaller public community library in Ward 8. But in Ward 3, the home of four universities with their libraries, the city has three public library branches, plus a larger regional library.

Although almost half the births in the city take place east of the river, there are only a few pediatricians there willing to accept Medicaid patients.

There are about 13,000 licensed doctors in Washington, but only a few have private practices in its neediest neighborhoods, said Dr. Mohammad N. Akhter of the city's Department of Human Services.

"In one way, Washington is the capital of the free world," Dr. Akhter said. "But in another way, it is an example of a third world country. Cuba has a better infant mortality rate than Washington."

Historically, said Patricia Hawkins, associate director of the Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic, the neighborhoods east of the Anacostia have never received their fair share of services.

"You'd think, where you have this concentration of problems, you'd have a concentration of services," Dr. Hawkins said. "It has not worked out that way."

Indeed, east of the river is a hard place to feel good about the American Dream. There are only a couple of restaurants where a family can go to sit down and have a meal. In Ward 8, even the McDonald's is closed and boarded up. There is no children's clothing store. There is no movie theater, health club or auto repair shop. And some of the mom-and-pop delis have recently been shut down for selling drugs along with the subs.

But there are plenty of liquor stores.

The Crisis Today's Problems Look the Same

While voters in Ward 3 grumble about potholes, canceled recycling days or fewer garbage collections, in Ward 8 the cutbacks and shortages can be life-threatening.

Inspector Winston Robinson, the commander of the seventh police district, which is responsible for the neighborhood where Markeisha lives, sees the impact of the city's budget crisis in an increase in crime that is matched by a shortage of patrol cars and typewriter ribbon.

A year ago, crime was down in his district, Mr. Robinson said, "but so far this year, we've had an increase."

There have been more than 30 homicides in the seventh district this year; there have been none in Ward 3.

Repairs and replacements to the city's battered fleet of police cars have meant fewer patrols on the street. For the first six months of this year, Mr. Robinson said his district usually had only eight police cars on the streets on any given night, when it is supposed to have 21.

"We couldn't get parts -- tires, batteries, none of the essentials," he said. "You can't provide quality police service if you don't have mobility."

Mr. Robinson said that the district currently had about 16 cars on the street, and that now that Congress had promised to pump millions of dollars into the department even while cutting other areas of the District's government, he expected to get more cars out on patrol.

"But our biggest burden now is restoring the public's trust," he said. "People were feeling pretty good about us last year. The budget problems kind of whacked everything out of order."

On a recent rainy Saturday night, two 20-something police officers, who were afraid to have their names used in the newspaper, patrolled the streets and said they were lucky to have a police car that ran.

They said that there was only one typewriter -- a manual -- at the station, and that it often had no ribbon. "If you want to type your reports," one said, "you have to bring your own."

In two hours, their police radio crackled at least five times with reports of shots fired. The officers said no day passed without a Code 1 call, a top-priority case.

They said their colleagues in the second district patrolling Ward 3 told them that a week could pass without a Code 1.

When people in Ward 8 are asked what impact the city's fiscal problems is having on their shops, schools and hopes for their children, most answer with a weary been-through-it-all-before shrug.

"Sweetheart," said Mrs. Massey, the advocate for public-housing residents in Ward 8, "over here, living through crises is an everyday way of life, and it's been that way for a long, long time. The only reason people are paying any attention now is because the pain we always feel has spread to other parts of town."

At Heart Junior High School, where Markeisha is in the seventh grade, her guidance counselor is Barbara Faison, who also coaches the tennis team. Ms. Faison has to share a computer and a typewriter with three other counselors, each of whom has about 250 students.

There is barely enough money for basic educational supplies, but everyone, Ms. Faison says, knows more budget cuts are coming.

"A cut here feels much deeper than a cut in Ward 3," she said. "There, the cuts might feel like a nick. Over here it feels like someone just cut off your hand."

Markeisha and her friends in Valley Green are wise beyond their years. They have to be to survive. But they are also just ordinary children. And like the grown-ups in their world, they learn early on how to make do with less.

James McCrae, 13, uses the boarded-up buildings in the development to practice his tennis game. Recently, he worked on his backhand, slamming the ball against a wall and a faded "No Trespassing" sign. Sometimes the ball went high and wide and hit a boarded-up window, sending a hollow echo floating over the Valley.

"Ain't nothing to be scared of around here now," James said, wiping his round face. "Ain't nothing left."

Then Markeisha flew by on her green 10-speed as the younger children chased her down the potholed street, calling her name and begging for a turn on the bicycle.

When she slowed down long enough to reveal some of her dreams, Markeisha said she wanted to be a doctor or a hair stylist like her mother. That is, she added, "if something bad doesn't happen to me."

Because of violence in the neighborhood, tutoring sessions and Bible study at the Jesus House had to be canceled at least twice this year. One night, as the tutors pulled onto Second Street to pick up children, several police officers, their guns drawn, were running around after conducting a raid on a drug house.

One of the younger children who did not usually attend the tutoring sessions ran up to the car of Ms. French, the tutor, crying and begging to go along because he was afraid to stay on the block.

"No," Ms. French said, "there are some neighborhoods where you feel safe."

"That's where I want to live," Markeisha said.

The Spirit Fight for Survival Brings New Hope

Most of the monuments east of the Anacostia are flesh and blood, ordinary people trying to grow flowers in a desert. They are people like Willis Thomas, a tennis coach with the Arthur Ashe Foundation, and Hannah M. Hawkins, founder of a social service program, Children of Mine.

"If these kids weren't out here playing tennis, they'd probably be running the streets," said Mr. Thomas, who has coached professional players like Zina Garrison-Jackson and Katrina Adams. "Over in Ward 3, people are trying to make the social registry. Over here, they're just trying to survive."

Mrs. Hawkins founded Children of Mine about 11 years ago. It offers after-school meals, tutoring and family counseling. There are days when Mrs. Hawkins, who is 56, is alone with 80 children because she has no money to pay a staff. Everything the program uses, from chairs to toys, is donated. She is not paid.

"We're in worse shape over here than we've ever been," she said. "But through the grace of God, we attempt to do it."

Every other Sunday, the Players Lounge, a restaurant and bar on Martin Luther King Avenue, is turned into a gospel show place. The bottles of gin and whisky are removed from the shelves, and the beer advertisements and cigarette machines are covered with sheets.

"In a matter of minutes," said Philip Pannell, an advocate for the neighborhood, "the Players Lounge becomes the Prayers Lounge. Over here, you learn how to stretch everything you can, including faith and hope."

Arrington Dixon, a businessman and former member of the City Council, returned several years ago to Ward 8, where he had grown up. He is now chairman of a neighborhood civic association. He also runs a telecommunications company from his basement, just down the block from the drug dealers on Martin Luther King Avenue.

Mr. Dixon knows one dealer from their being Boy Scouts together.

"We have a lot of work to do to turn this around," Mr. Dixon said. "To get fair treatment, you have to make noise. The city is doing less here because the political strength is not here. Other parts of the city have more resources and time to make demands. We have people working two jobs just to reach the poverty level. We have to get an infusion of more middle-class people. And we have to organize."

Photos: 'A WAR ZONE' Abandoned businesses at the corner of MartinLuther King Avenue and Good Hope Road are symbols of poverty in the capital's Anacostia neighborhood. "This is the same city where the President of the United States lives," a community advocate said.; FAINT HOPE Markeisha Richardson lives in a housing project east of the Anacostia River in a neglected section of Washington. Markeisha, 13, says she wants to be a doctor or a hair stylist like her mother, then adds, "If something bad doesn't happen to me." (Photographs by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times) (pg. A18) Chart: "Streets Of Hardship" lists population and demographic figures for Ward 8. (Sources: Office of Planning/State Data Center; "Indices: A Statistical Index to District of Columbia Services") (pg. A18)